Posted
by
samzenpuson Thursday July 17, 2014 @12:28AM
from the have-jet-will-travel dept.

MatthewVD writes Almost half a century ago, New York Central Railroad engineer Don Wetzel and his team bolted two J47-19 jet engines, throttled up the engines and tore down a length of track from Butler, Indiana to Stryker, Ohio at almost 184 mph. Today, the M-497 still holds the record for America's fastest train. This is the story of how it happened.

This. Fast trains are not rocket science...unless you live in the US of A. Here it is a Jetson's fantasy future world to have trains that can get you from point A to B faster than a car.In the rest of the world, meh, not so much. Been there, done that.

Hate to break it you America, but our shit does stink. We're headed toward 3rd world status, all for the want of motivation.

I'll get modded to negative infinity pretty soon by the folks who can't face the truth, but America needs to get off its ass and get mov

Any trip in America much longer than one tank of gas you're most likely better off flying, because if you're going that far you're probably going a LONG ways, and jets are faster than any train will ever be. America, unlike Europe, simple lacks a sufficient number of destinations beyond casual driving distance but close enough for trains to still beat planes because they don't have

Jets might be faster for the actual distance, but considering the whole time of travel, they aren't really faster. Boarding a train takes 5 mins. boarding a plane with all the security checks takes 1 hour. In this 55 mins, a bullet train of 150 mph goes 100 miles (and that's including acceleration). And then you have to go to the airport, while the train station is downtown, this takes another 1 hrs to get there, and 1 hrs to go from the airport downtown at your destination. In this time, the train has covered another 200 miles. Yes, the plane may take for the 400 mls flight only 1 hour, but the whole trip takes you 4 hrs, and in this time, the train makes it also to the destination.

I had a flight from my local airport to Dallas/FtWorth which is about 750 miles. My boarding time was 8:46am with the flight taking off at 9:11am, scheduled.

It takes 30 minutes for me to drive to the airport, though I live on the opposite side of the city from where it's located. I arrived at the airport at 8:43am. Printed my boarding passes off, there, at 8:45am. I was in and through the TSA checkpoint by 8:49am. I was on the plane by 8:53am (10 minutes to board my plane). We were in the air by 9:07am for

I don't know what airline you are on, but if you arrived at 8:43 for a 9:07 flight on most airlines, they would not let you on the plane. Policy is that you must be at the boarding area 30 minutes prior to takeoff. Many of them won't even let you check in and get your boarding pass, let alone attempt to make it through security.

I'd say you are lucky and possibly have a really good Federal Security Director at your airport. I regularly spend a half hour in the TSA line and have spent over an hour multiple times in different cities. Though to be fair I've also gotten through in 5 minutes, and the time isn't necessarily predictable. If you need to check a bag that can add 5 minutes to an hour, plus the 20 minutes in advance that you should be at the gate and the fact that airlines and the TSA aren't generally sympathetic if you are r

I routinely have to travel from Dayton Oh to Knob Noster Mo. It is an 8 hour drive, Flying into their regional airport which is an hour away takes about 7 hours and I have been stranded there because even though I had a reservation there were no cars to be rented. The other option is going to Kansas City which has a 90 minute drive on the end of it and takes 7.5 hours all together. Flying through the southwest it's even worse as small regional airports can be over an hour away and larger airports over two h

I'm European and don't think 100 miles is an especially long distance. To visit my sister I have to travel >300 miles. Car is okay, flight is also okay (but transfer to/from airports take a lot of time) but taking the high speed train is fast, comfortable and inexpensive. Even counting the transfer to the nearest train station the train is the fastest way to travel. And while doing that using Internet on the notebook computer (plugged into an AC jack) and relaxing in the comfortable chair

OK France is much smaller than the USA, but it's still pretty big, and the TGV trains have been a huge success, attracting travellers away from air and road. With zero fatalities since its inception.And of course, runs on cheap, low-carbon electricty generated by France's nuclear power stations...So fast, safe and green. What more do you want?

Note that the TGV network stretches into neighboring countries like Belgium and Germany (e.g. Aachen) too, and connects to German ICE. The Netherlands have a branch too, but it is not running full speed yet. The Netherlands and Belgium are much smaller than France, but more densely populated.

The majority of passenger trips in the US are either less than 50 miles, or more than a thousand, with almost nothing in between. At the short end, the flexibility of car travel beats the cost reduction of rail; at the long end, the speed of air travel beats rail.

The only exception to this is the BosWash area [wikipedia.org], where -- guess what? -- Amtrak is able to provide profitable rail service. It's not motivation that keeps the US from having good passenger rail service, it's geography.

1) trains are faster.2) but more importantly trains still move reasonably fast in and near urban centers3) While budget flights (if they happen to go from/to where you want) are cheaper they often require extended checkin times and airport to center commute negating time advantages

But you move your routes around and suddenly there are people who have lost service. Your service is now known as something that can't be relied on so people have to obtain their own vehicles "just in case" and so your service becomes even less popular.

Buses are a losing game and most only really survive through subsidies.

Yes, I know, I know. The crazy Libertarian talk. But that is, what happened [wikipedia.org] — a combination of government regulating the cost of tickets, while imposing heavy taxes and building highways, where automobiles — both passenger and goods-carrying — could travel for less and less.

The Nordic report cited above indicates that deterioration from environmental effects is not significant. Doesn't sound right, but then none of this matches intuition.

Speculation based on cursory reading: Since trucks do their worst where pavement is rough, the freeze-thaw cycle doesn't get a chance to do its worst because the trucks are too quick at expanding fissures and pounding the edges of cracks. Once trucks start tearing up a roadway, the destruction accelerates because tires bang asphalt at all angl

He means that a business should hold its own belt up, and not be financed via the government by allocation of taxes.

In short, charge toll and let them pass the charge on to consumers via their products/services pricing.. That's the capitalistic way, not the commie state taking taxes from personal traffic and going light on business driving. (that being said, in Europe it is the same. Consumers pay much more for driving (gas taxes and direct road taxes) than business drivers)

What you list are economic activities. Those are what humans intend to subsidize. We do not intend to favor specific businesses or to kill off businesses that would otherwise thrive.

The trucking industry operates with large enough organizations to influence policy in its favor. That industry is as large as it is because it has an unfair cost advantage over other modes of transport and because it has successfully hidden its subsidies while ensuring the failure of rail transportation.

Unless you count gas-taxes re-appripiated for mass-transit as a 'profit'.

Most of the Interstate is supported by fuel taxes. Fuel taxes are paid for by drivers. Who use the Interstate. So, I'd say that it's a pretty good case of 'user pays'.

Your argument would work if the fuel taxes funded the construction and maintenance of the interstates. They don't. If we wanted them to, we could get there without raising the fuel taxes paid by passenger vehicles, in fact those might possibly be reduced (though the reductions should probably be replaced with carbon taxes, used to fund carbon sequestration). Taxes on the fuel (or whatever) paid by trucks, however, should increase several fold, since they cause the vast majority of the highway construction a

...Most of the Interstate is supported by fuel taxes. Fuel taxes are paid for by drivers.

Who are not now paying enough into the system (highway trust fund) to keep it solvent due to the combination of rising costs for maintenance and rebuilding of the highway system and the loss of revenue generated by the fuel taxes as cars have grown more efficient. At some point fuel taxes will need to be raised, tolls imposed, or more money from elsewhere in the budget shifted to highways. That'll be a fun fight to watch and the roads and bridges crumble

Most of the Interstate is supported by fuel taxes. Fuel taxes are paid for by drivers. Who use the Interstate. So, I'd say that it's a pretty good case of 'user pays'.

Used to be more true, not so much today. The Highway Trust Fund [wikipedia.org] - which is funded by a combination of federal fuel and vehicle taxes - has been bailed out before ($35 billion between 2008 and 2010) and is out of money again this year. And the federal government has turned over responsibility for the interstate highways to the individual states, so a big chunk of the construction, maintenance, and repair bills actually comes from the states.

I think pretty much everyone accepts the government killed passenger rail. It's not just what you mention, but also state support for suburbanization and the running down of Urban areas, including effective bans on Urban redevelopment (well meant but poorly thought out "parking mandates" effectively made it prohibitively expensive to redevelop land in cities), leading to the flight out of cities to areas where car ownership was mandatory.

What makes food service profitable is that passengers ride the train that otherwise wouldn't. Tell Amtrak to discontinue food service, and it would destroy ridership on their already poorly performing long distance services. The subsidy needed to continue operating them would skyrocket, and would be immensely high per-passenger.

The long-distance railroads in the U.S. were built by giving away land stolen from other peoples. Not just land to build the lines on, but a checkerboard of land for miles on both sides of the track, land that the railroads could sell to recoup their capital.

Many of these railroads were later bought out by John D. Rockefeller so that he could kill his competitors in the oil business by making it unprofitable for anyone else to transport petroleum.

Contrast with Japan. Their nationalized railway network was privatized decades ago, and along with the other private railways it is heavily regulated. Yet it is still a massive success, investing vast amounts of money in infrastructure and upgrades.

You know it amazes me to still here this from folks. I'll let you in on a little secret. The reason Amtrak was formed was because the Penn Central was bleeding money and they had the Northeast Corridor (NEC). Since a lot of Congressmen and Senators actually rode the train into DC this could be a problem if the Penn curtailed or discontinued service. Of course it couldn't because it had a long standing agreements with the government to provide passenger service. As a matter of fact all of the huge land tracks that were granted to railroads in this country included little hooks for passenger rail service. Sure, the railroads from post WWII were losing money on passenger service because people were buying cars and the feds were sponsoring airports and the national highway system. But instead of letting the railroads drop unprofitable lines, the government pushed them to continue their agreements. The government regulated Railroads and some thing airlines are the most regulated, think again. The CFR (Code of Federal Regulations) covering Railroads is extensive and still in force even in a deregulation climate. Some of the passenger services became shadows such as running an RCD (Rail Car Diesel) as a train for example instead of a multi-car train. The point is the government has been involved in Railroads in this country for a very long time. Republican or Democratic administrations, it doesn't matter hell the PRR received a $77m [wikipedia.org] loan for electrification from the new deal which was a chunk of change back then. For comparison the Hoover dam only cost $46m during the same era. [wikipedia.org]

So in the late 60s the Penn Central now with more absorbed Railroads consolidated and more miles of track and debt tied on started losing money, so much so that it filed for bankruptcy in 1970. This sent a shock wave up and down the east coast. Backroom deals were being hashed because a Federal Bankruptcy judge would allow the Penn Central to abandon less profitable passenger service, even if they had contracts and deals to provide it. What would the east coast people do and more importantly how would the Senators and Congressman who'd become accustomed to getting to / from DC quickly do? So a backroom deal was done and Amtrak was created but when other Railroads heard about the deal they said "hey, no fair" and lobbied their Congressmen and Senators and that's why boys and girls all interstate passenger rail service went to Amtrak as part of the Rail Passenger Service Act of 1970 [wikipedia.org] Of course the NEC was untouched but most of the country lost passenger service. At that point the Feds were 100% in the Railroad business and because it was set up as a for profit corporation under the DOT that meant that nobody in Amtrak could ever do anything like drop or add routes without bureaucrats or congressional approval. That's not a company, that's a federal service and more importantly Amtrak is the Federal Governments toy railroad with special earmarks having been placed in front if it all along the way to add or improve service. That's all politics and Amtrak could be viable if it was allowed to drop everything but the NEC but that's not going to happen and really, think about this: Amtrak's total budget request for 2014 was $2.6 billion. [wikipedia.org] Considering how much money we put into horseshit in this country that's not a lot of money but if you want Amtrak to be a independent corporation, which it isn't, it has to have an independent board who aren't appointed by the DOT and it has to be given enough funding to stretch into profitability and also, regrettably it needs to abandon routes that don't make financial sense.

It's not rhetoric when it's fact. Railroads have a very poor history when it comes to dealing fairly with the public and there was a real threat based upon facts and incidents that led to the regulations but if the people believe that the huge tracts of land that were granted to the industry didn't come with strings, then they're sadly mistaken. Hence they were probably more unfairly regulated and tasked with mandates including mandatory passenger service. It was for the public good and for fostering gro

It's strange [fueleconomy.gov] how your Metro is nearly 10MPG higher then it's rated economy, while your Prius is 10MPG lower than it's. Plus I also bet your Metro didn't get anywhere near 52MPG city driving where your Prius is designed for it's best economy due to regenerative braking.

My Metro had AC, and had no problem reading 75MPH under normal driving conditions. Sure the Prius has more power, and more safety features, but given that it is 20 years later, and the system is massively more complex, I can't forgive the 10mpg. Even if the Prius matched the metro in MPG, it would still be unimpressive that the Toyota engineers could only match the Metro when they added the little bit of extra power and massive amounts of complexity.

The frontal area to mass ratio of a train is tiny compared to almost every other form of transport, so that's less of a problem.

The limiting factor with trains is usually the track, for really high speeds you need to almost completely smooth out the bends and flatten the hills, the impressive part of the jet train is that it went so fast on a track designed for much, much lower speeds.

The Mallard was steam-powered. It had 157.7kN of tractive effort. That's force (thrust) before rolling resistance.

Each one of those jets has 23kN of thrust before resistance. So two of them is still less than half of the Mallard EVEN IF you assume that half it's total energy is wasted trying to push the wheels at that speed.

And this had been 30 years earlier. Within only months of being built, and then going on to retirement as a normal train in 1963. This train had done it, casually

The thing is the jet train - now I appreciate the effort and it is pretty cool - wasn't a train at all, it was just a light locomotive. The Mallard record was done with a train. It wasn't just a light loco, there were other vehicles coupled to the Mallard when it did the 125mph run.

Nah. There's a lot of crap spoken about the NYC Jet train thing. One presumption, which has more to do with smarty-pants hindsight, is that it was a prototype for a serious train, that NYC actually planned to run high speed trains like that. But that's not the case.

NYC added jets to some unused rolling stock because it was a _quick_ _cheap_ way to get a train to go fast. They wanted a train to go fast because they were studying how high speed trains would interact with the track. Would it be possible to

In the late 1800's, Dr. Emmett Brown and Marty McFly got a train up to just over 88mph before it careened off the end of a bridge still being constructed. No rockets were used in that endeavor. Just carefully staged fuel pellets. I watched a documentary on this a long time ago.

Oh, dear. _Energy_ is half the mass times the velocity squared. I'm afraid that's directly tied to the amount of fuel needed, not counting losses, to achieve that speed without friction. It's not really tied to the capabilities of the engines involved.

The difficulty is the necessary _thrust_, or force, needed to overcome resistance and _accumulate_ that much energy, and that much momentum, in the train itself. Even a well designed train will have considerable friction losses, at those speeds, in its own wh

Hey Jimmy*, drag is proportional to the square of velocity *because* of air resistance. Thought you might like to know, but knowledge doesn't seem to be your happy place.

You don't know what you're talking about AC, so please shut the hell up and let the more knowledgeable adults talk, m'kay?

And before you start getting all snarky, I teach engineering, and I am quite capable of telling you that you don't know your ass from your elbow.

You don't know your ass from your elbow.

So shut up. Now.

*Jimmy is my favorite pet name for dumbshits that don't know basic physics but like to spout off like they do on Slashdot.

Not to beat a dead horse but drag is a force not a unit of power or energy and the amount of power needed to overcome drag is proportional to the cube of velocity not its square. While the force from drag is important in terms of the design of the train and the materials used in it's construction, it's the power requirement that is the determining factor for the engine spec.

... but good teachers also listen. And recognize when a student gets it right, even if the student expresses it "strangely". Irate Engineer doesn't seem to be able to notice when somebody speaks about energy rather than drag... and even if both may be proportional to the square of velocity, they are not the same thing!

In Europe, they discovered that train wrecks were really, really bad. So they set about building a system of trains that didn't wreck, with numerous controls and systems to prevent collisions, resulting in an excellent safety record and low cost.

In the United States, they discovered that train wrecks were really, really bad. So they set about building a system of trains that survived wrecks with minimal injuries, with heavy crash cages and crumple zones in order to gracefully survive collisions, resulting in an excellent safety record and ridiculous costs.

Making a US train go as fast as an EU train is very difficult to do feasibly, since it weighs at least 4x as much per passenger.

Sorry, false. European trains have crumple zones, too. They're the areas near the doors, above the axles. You'll generally sit between those areas, not above the axles. This is especially true in high-speed trains where those areas are reserved for luggage etc.

As for "numerous controls", the EU rail safety system (ERTMS) is not exactly a resounding success. Over time, over budget, and as a result many countries still use their national, outdated 60's-era train control systems. Passing red signs happens in a

Meh, mostly in the US if something is dangerous we prefer to regulate it out of existence rather than make it safer anyway.

I do find it interesting we can design a stock car that allows the driver to walk away from a 200+ MPH collision with a brick wall and still go like a bat out of hell but not so much with trains. I suppose fuel efficiency was never a major concern with the stock car though.

The trick is to build new, dedicated lines for the high speed trains. Even if they run parallel to the existing ones. The up-front cost is higher but over the railway's lifetime it is worth it. Unfortunately that requires companies that can see beyond next quarter's profits. Give Japan Rail East a call, ask about their new linear motor (maglev) bullet train and how much it costs.

Here, in 'Murica, you must drive your car, citizen! Taking a train anywhere is blasphemy. You will be punished by courteous service, relaxed (but not the most expedient) travel, and sensible security precautions.

To be fair, taking a train to New York, or to San Francisco, is fine. It's only blasphemy when you take a train to a city like LA, where public transportation is a joke, and you end up waiting for a scheduled city bus that never comes.

You might as well just fly and rent a car when you get there, it's actually faster, more flexible (despite the TSA), and much cheaper than the train (assuming you don't mind planning your trips in advance and losing your checked-in luggage as a normal cost of flying in the US

Railways have the highest fixed costs of any transportation system. 25%, I was told 30 years ago when I worked on one.
High fixed, low variable cost. So adding one freight car = dirt cheap. Going one mph faster on a curve = very expensive, due to increased wear on rails, road bed, etc.

There is also the not small problem of grade. Trains dislike hills, with a grade over 1% being excessive to them. Cars routinely handle ten times this.

It's only a problem if you are thinking about short term profits. Look at the Japanese bullet train network, and particularly at the new maglev line currently under construction. The deal with grades by going through mountain ranges with tunnels. The cost is astronomical, but they are willing to amortize it over very long periods of time. They know that the service will be popular (and affordable), and always much faster and easier than flying. Even the current 320kph trains are, although this thing is proj

It is a fundamental problem, that leads to the division of bulk (slow) hauling = railways, people & fast hauling = trucks/cars.

You're right about the division, but... In much of Europe, it's the other way around: trains carry passengers, trucks carry cargo. Because the higher speed trains have right-of-way vs. slow cargo trains. In the US, slow cargo trains have right-of-way, slowing down passenger trains.

Denmark doesn't even have real high-speed trains, but at a top-speed of 180 km/h it still exceeds anything you'd ever get away with on the highway. The few cargo trains we have mostly do their 40 km/h thing at night.

In the US, slow cargo trains have right-of-way, slowing down passenger trains.

Not quite. Passenger trains have priority, and only lose it when they run late [wikipedia.org] and even then, it is not that freight has priority over passenger service but that it does not have to yield to passenger trains. It would be more accurate to say it becomes "first come, first served". Kind of like if you reserve a table, they hold it for you for a few minutes after the time you set, then it becomes available to all.

Not quite. Passenger trains have priority, and only lose it when they run late [wikipedia.org] and even then, it is not that freight has priority over passenger service but that it does not have to yield to passenger trains.

Fair enough (though your Wikipedia reference doesn't really support your claim), but in much of Europe, the passenger trains do have right of way, even if they're running late. Any freight trains on the way are literally sidetracked to allow the passenger train to run at full speed.

I've only noticed this once; the train had been behind schedule and running slowly for a little while, and the driver came on the intercom to apologize, noting that we were just waiting for the freight train to get out of the way

That says something about the state of train travel in the US. That ain't nothing to be proud of: there are trains in Europe and Japan that have been running regular services at higher speeds for a long time.

Meanwhile, the Japanese Shinkansen (Bullet Train) started regular commercial service a full two years earlier in 1964. Shinkansen now routinely exceed 200mph, although the first ones (Series 0) ran at 137mph.

For those that have never used the Shinkansen, they are truly awesome. They leave and arrive to the scheduled minute. There is no TSA bullshit, so you can arrive at the station a few minutes before departure. There's loads of leg room. For any journey less than around 3-4 hours there is no point thinking about air travel.

Amusingly, the Shinkansen actually makes Japanese domestic airports more efficient as well. After all, the more crap a traveller has to deal with at the airport, the more likely they are to take the train. Thus, there is no TSA bullshit at Japanese domestic airports and you can arrive 10 minutes before your flight and easily make boarding.

That jet-powered locomotive was neverintended as a useful means of propulsion. It was just to test track-train dynamics at higher speed. Not much was done with the info, since Amtrak wasn't into high speed rail.

The next big advances in high speed rail were Japan's Tokaido line and San Francisco's BART, both around 1970. The original Tokaido trains had conventional wheel arrangements, and required a very good and very high maintenance roadbed. The SF BART system had the first trains with an active suspension, with each car body supported on a triangle of three air bags controlled by electronic controls. This allowed a higher body height at higher speed, allowing more wheel travel and a softer suspension. Also, all wheels were powered, as is normal in transit operations.

The French TGV brought both of those ideas together - high speed plus active suspension with more suspension travel, with all wheels powered. This allowed high speed trains without excessive track wear. (That's a big problem with high speed rail. A French test in 1955 reached 331 km/h, but damaged the track seriously in only one run. There were serious doubts for years whether steel wheel on steel rail could ever go that fast in routine operation.)

As with cars, there's been more than enough power to go fast for decades. Wheel and suspension issues are what limit speed.

You miss out one innovation - Talgo rolling stock. The company by that name in the Basque country (Spain) developed a lightweight, low CofG articulated train that could efficiently run at high speeds (Talgo is an anacronym - Tren Articulado Ligero Goicoechea Oriol - Lightweight Articulated Train by Golcechea Oriol). The current Talgo designed high speed units run up to 320km/h (just over 190 mph) and have an entirely passive tilting mechanism. The wheelsets are connected via the roof of each vehicle so the

Try that today and there would be not only bureaucrats in your way but bureaucratic engineers who would complain about the metal in the tracks, the wheels, the bearings, everything.

I find that so little of human accomplishment today is real, it tends to be more accountants and PR people who have a long checklist having to explain why their product is better. Elon Musk must make these kinds of people weep; by saying what he is going to do in plain English and then doing it. He doesn't have to explain why

You realize the J47 is a GE jet? Of course they're going to have a "look what cool stuff has been done with our crap" story or five. It's prolly the only place you can find that story told in a semi-reliable fashion anymore.

It can depend. There are reasons that bridges or underpasses cannot be put in some locations but the most likely explanation is that the bridge makers and politicians in Virginia share several of the same relatives.